


The Spider's Intention

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Deal with a Devil, Rebirth, Spiders, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Míriel strikes a bargain, for herself and for her son.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



“You plundered my son's treasures, and devoured them. You helped the Dark Foe kill my husband. Why should I trust you to help me now? What else could I possibly give you to appease you?”

“The Dark Foe deceived me and betrayed me. My hunger was not sated, and his servants left my body scorched, and me blinded. I desire revenge against him as much as you and your son do.” 

Míriel brushed her hand over the tapestry depicting the destruction of the Trees – her own work – feeling the stitches under her hand, and let her gaze sweep over the composition. Laurelin had already been consumed, and the giant spider was propped on her four back legs, ready to strike down and suck the life out of Tyelperion. Vairë had shown her the true guise of Ungoliantë, a shape terrible yet alluring. 

“Weaver of dark, what would you promise me?”

“My power, shared between the two of us. A body for your son, woven of matter stronger than flesh.”

“And freedom?”

“Freedom I cannot gift you.”

Míriel gave a small mirthless snicker. 

“What would you take of me?”

There was a long, shuddering sigh, into which pain hope and desire were intermingled.

“I need your body, to restore mine.”

“My body?” Míriel echoed, a cold shiver seizing her. 

“You would not lose it. We will share it.”

Something brushed her hand, rising from the stitches in the tapestry – or so it seemed to her – and Míriel pulled it away.

“Tarry not! I cannot return here, lest the Doomsman perceive my presence.”

Míriel wavered.

“What good will it do you to remain here, prisoners both, you and your son? And are we not both weavers? Why should we serve the thankless, merciless Valar?”

Míriel put out her hand and drew it back anew, closing her fist – tempted, yet mistrusting.

“Your grandsons too are all doomed to die. The eldest is being tortured as we speak. Surely you want to put an end to that... _Fíriel_?”

Míriel's eyes flashed. She steeled her heart, and extended both arms towards the tapestry. “Take what you will.”

A crystalline sound reverberated through air, a laugh she could have sworn.

Hair-thin filaments departed from the spider she had herself woven, shimmering diamond-like and warm, and coiled about her waist her arms her legs. They pulled her towards the tapestry and through the wall of mist encircling Vairë's dominion. 

Dark welcomed her in Ungoliantë's lair. The clothing she had worn fell from her body like fragile ash, and the spider thread brought her closer and closer to countless round globes filled with muted light she recognised as eyes. Her body was held aloft, spread open naked before the gigantic creature she could but barely make out. None of the eyes focused on her, yet she could feel the spider's covetous attention on her. Fear threatened to smother her. She closed her eyes, but her ears were filled with the sound of the thread sibilating around her body, and the creaking and tapping as the spider restlessly moved her legs. 

The thread crept up to her face, something hot and damp drew closer and closer between her legs. Then there was stickiness, something probing her opening, almost gently. Then something pierced her, curled inside her and hooked itself onto her womb. Her voice died in her throat, her body convulsed inside the cocoon it had been wrapped up in, and her body was unravelled into threads dissolving into pure darkness. 

*

The cocoon split open and Fëanáro was spit onto the ground, a wingless butterfly. His whole body ached. The air suddenly filling his lungs felt heavy, making his chest heave as if he had inhaled something solid and needed to spit it out. He retched, supporting himself on his hands and knees on rock bare as he himself was. His head spun, and he felt cold, so cold, and bereft. He rued to leave the warmth that had so tenderly swathed him, and he rued even more to be torn from the dream of being back inside his mother's womb.

“I am here with you, my son.” 

The voice echoed under the roof of the cave. Fëanáro sprang to his feet and whirled around, unstable on legs that were too long for an elf.

For the first time in his life he gazed into his mother's eyes – black eyes replicated in large round pairs, all turned upon him. Míriel's chest emerged from the larger body of a spider, pearl-pale, her hair mingling with the silver of the spider's hide. Next to her stood a second creature, identical, save that her hair was black rather than silver. But for that detail, he would never have been able to recognise his own mother. 

Míriel advanced and reached out with her two front legs – amber and obsidian – picked him up, and brought him close to what was left of her elven body. 

“Mother?” Fëanáro rasped, his scratch of a voice shrill with astonishment, but emotion overcame him now that he was skin to skin with his mother, and nothing more than that one word would come out of his parched, brittle mouth. 

Míriel wrapped her arms around him, and drew him closer still. He fit perfectly in the depression where her spider's body fused to her waist, like a fledgling in his nest. 

“Mother will not let you go again,” she cooed in her strangely metallic tone. 

Fëanáro threw soot-dark arms around her, and curled up against her bosom.

**Author's Note:**

> The spider I had in mind for Míriel and Ungoliant fused together is [Argiope Argentata](http://www.ecoregistros.org/site/images/albumes/32/9515/argiope_fn.jpg).


End file.
